Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » Will citizen journalism put me out of a job?

December 02, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Will citizen journalism put me out of a job?

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I have to thank Charles Cooper at Cnet for his thoughtful article, Wikipedia and the nature of truth, for moving me to write this piece.

Perhaps because blogging is essentially a high tech phenomenon, high tech appears to be one of the first industries to be enthralled with the idea of citizen journalists.

Admittedly because politicians lie to us regularly, on both sides of the fence, blogging has also quickly been catapulted into the forefront of the political debate.

I have no argument with the right to express any opinion but I am concerned when those opinions replace the facts.

Imagine an online so-called "newspaper" that has as its staff only blogging citizen journalists who have an interest in the subject matter they write about.

After all, doesn't a software engineer know more about metadata, the enterprise service bus, and master data management than some reporter with a BA or MA in journalism and a minor in English Lit?

Yes, they do know more technically. However, unlike reporters who view remaining neutral as the golden rule of journalism, tech experts often have an ax to grind and a point of view to promote.

The result is that the reader, if diligent, would have to become the reporter sorting out fact from fiction. In other words doing the job reporters were hired to do.

This is the job of a reporter whether they work for the Washington Post or InfoWorld, a trade publication. Reporters are counted on to listen to both sides and present the facts.

Spend an hour sometime with a Mac user, an open source devotee or someone who believes that the Amiga got a raw deal, and you will quickly understand why you need a disinterested third party, even if he or she knows less about processor gate arrays and object oriented programming.

The truth is I'm not really worried about my paycheck. But I am worried about an attitude that has less and less respect for what journalists are supposed to do and instead is willing to accept one side of the story because it is coming from a regular guy, a citizen, a blogger, just like you and me.

If you read history, the French Revolution is a good starting point, or fiction such as Animal Farm by George Orwell or Lord of the Flies by William Golding, you might see that the idea of so-called citizens calling the shots while having a certain visceral appeal can be a very dangerous concept to embrace.

Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on December 2, 2005 10:54 AM

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